[Antennaware] homemade coil

[Jan Ditzian]

I began work on shunt loading my tower for 80 and/or 160.  The initial 
reading on my MFJ 259 showed that the antenna was too short, and it 
needed a coil in series to get X=0.  I went to a plumbing shop and found 
solid #12 insulated wire, wrapped it around some 4-inch diameter PVC 
pipe, and lo and behold, I am in the ballpark.

My question is: I intend to re-wrap the wire so it is neat, but what 
kind of problems should I expect from this kluge coil?  I tried moving 
the turns around, with the ends fixed in place, and there is almost no 
change in X on the 259.  Am I looking at low efficiency, potential 
arcing, other problems associated with such a cavalier method of 
creating a coil?

Jan, KX2A